Tehran, Aug 3 (IANS) Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Monday that negotiations between Iran and Oman are focused on reaching an agreement on designating a “temporary” route to ensure safe shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
“The negotiations have been focused on the idea that the southern route, which passes through Oman’s waters, and the northern route, which passes through Iran’s territorial waters, would turn into an intermediate route,” Baghaei said at a weekly press conference in Tehran.
He said the talks are centred on a round-trip corridor, not two or three separate routes, and the intermediate route will be used temporarily until a permanent one is finalised, Xinhua News Agency reported.
The waterway’s closure stems not from differences between Iran and Oman, but from US-Israeli “military aggression” against Iran, Baghaei said, adding the strait’s status will stay unchanged as long as Washington continues its “malicious” actions against the country.
Speaking at a cabinet meeting in Tehran on Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said the negotiations between Iran and Oman are in their final stages, according to the official news agency IRNA.
Baghaei also said at the press conference the country will take every necessary action to hold Ukraine to account for its recent attack on an Iranian vessel.
On July 25, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country’s forces had hit a Russian warship and vessels used for transporting Iran-linked military cargo in the Caspian Sea.
US President Donald Trump said Sunday that negotiations with Iran will begin Monday afternoon, noting that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar had asked the United States to call off planned strikes because “they think there’s a deal.”
“There’s a deal on (the Strait of) Hormuz, and then there will be a deal on the nuclear, or you might call it the denuclearisation of Iran,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One en route to Joint Base Andrews.
Claiming that Iran had also asked the United States to pull back the planned strikes, Trump said that “now what we’re doing is we’re talking to them in the form of a negotiation.”
Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud spoke on the phone with Trump on Saturday and “expressed concern and asked for clarity” about the proposed plan of action against Iran, a US official told news outlet Axios.
–IANS
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